[sdiy] pcb design sucks.

[Michael Buchstaller]

>Do you now know why the ASM-1 PCB is double sided? ;o)
>Single-sided PCB layout is an artform of its own.

Maybe. But personally, i have never successfully made a double-
sided board.
Years ago i did experiment with it and found it to be extremely tricky
to get the matching exposure of the traces for both sides. Then the
etching sucks if you do not have professional eqipment, or is just
very messy. Also one has to take care of all those vias and solder
pieces of wire in them on both sides; as much as work than making a
jumper wire on a single sided PCB.

So, for all my own boards i have been sticking to single-sided boards.
Designs with discrete components are not too tricky, but when i comes
to 40-pin DIP´s it *will* become hairy. (just did a PCS for my MoniVoice,
a monophonic SID based synth. Because this could be a commercial
product, i wanted to include all parts on one 150*200 mm board, including
the power supply, MIDI, processor, Sound Chip, hardware ADSR and
external filter)
It was tricky, but can be done. The best hint is to use no autorouter but
place all traces manually. It will take some time and patience, but experience
comes as one does it several times.


-Michael Buchstaller